‘Yes. All of them. Not one decent guy playing on that team.’
Jordan chuckles, like he knows something I don’t. ‘That team, eh.’
A loud crash comes from inside the boatshed – maybe the breaking of glass – and we both quickly turn in its direction.
‘My uncle.’ Jordan shakes his head. ‘Blind as and won’t wear his glasses.’
I don’t know what to say next, because I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I got in the kayak so fast, and without a plan, that I can’t explain my arrival. He might go back now, I hope, to help his uncle with whatever he’s smashed inside the shed.
‘Are you good? I’d better go and see . . .’
I nod, but when he walks off, I suddenly change my mind. I want him to stay. He seems like one of the good guys.
The view really is good from here. Without the squealing from the river, the kind girls make when they’re surprised by a splash – you’re in water, what do you think is going to happen? – and drums for background noise, it’s peaceful, too. Not a sound, apart from the odd shuffle from the boatshed. This is what the Cedars look out to every day, I realise as I lean back against the red gum. It feels illegal to be touching this tree, like it’s something sacred that belongs to others, not for me to ruin.
It wouldn’t be the first thing I’ve ruined tonight.
‘What’s for dinner?’ Dad had bellowed all the way from the garage. The standard evening bellow.
Out of her white-shirt-and-pencil-skirt combo and into her ‘lounge wear’, Mum was transferring three different kinds of salad, parcels of herbed fish and a bowl of mashed sweet potato from the kitchen to the table. Sufia might pose like Wonder Woman, but my mother actually is Wonder Woman.
Shontel’s slippered feet shuffled to the table and we sat opposite each other.
Dad started raving about Mum’s spread before he’d even dug in. ‘The best bloody meal you’ll ever get is in this house,’ he’d said. The standard evening rave.
‘Who needs rubbish takeaway?’ he’d added. This was new. ‘You should see the food they’re bringing onto the site, these wogs. They open up containers full of . . . God knows what. The smell! You couldn’t even stand it, let alone touch it!’
Mum and Shontel ignored him. I ignored him, but dug my fork into the padded seat of the chair beneath me instead of my food. His rant was short-lived – he’d started talking about something else now, materials that turned up late and threw off today’s schedule – but my anger was not. Just let it go, Imogen, I’d told myself. Just make like that stupid Disney song Shontel used to be obsessed with and let it go.
But I couldn’t. ‘I assume they’re getting their work done.’
‘Huh?’
‘Those wogs. I assume they’re getting their work done or else you wouldn’t be making so much money. So, what does it matter if their food repulses you?’ I remember when Layla used to bring leftovers to school after a big feast at her grandmother’s. Triangle pockets of meat sometimes, with a side of cold, flat beans dripping in oil. There was always someone who made a ‘gag’ face as they walked past her.
Dad almost choked on a bite of fish. He looked to Mum for support. She was equally as shocked. ‘You’ll want to watch your mouth, dear daughter.’
‘Well, I’ve already been silenced once.’ There was a slight tremor in my hand, the one holding the fork that was now upright on the table. I knew I needed to put it down. I glanced across to Shontel and she looked about ready to burst into tears. I didn’t mean to bring her into this.
‘You’ll do whatever we tell you is best for this family.’
What’s best for this family right now, I remember thinking, is to get up and run.
‘So, I was telling Mr Hyman . . .’
I don’t know what Carina told Mr Hyman this time as my concentration has been on the red gum. The tree I was sitting under last night, that now has its rightful occupants back beneath its thick branches. No drum music today, just lolling on straw beach mats. They look as though they’re out of fight now, too. Defeated by either the wavering midday warmth, or by their powerless position on this beach. Despite all their bravado, and everyone else’s perception of them, I know they accept the latter to be true.
Sufia is fanning herself with a piece of folded paper – for a second it looks like one of Mum’s campaign flyers – and staring, purposefully, at the tree on the opposite side of the bank. More specifically, she’s staring at the two people sitting underneath it.
Layla and Jordan are in serious conversation. Sometimes they laugh and nudge each other, but always they return to deep and meaningful. I can only see their backs and I so desperately want to see their faces. How do they look at each other? What does he do to make her laugh? If I get close enough, can I hear what they’re saying?
I discover that yes, I can hear what they’re saying from a position that’s close enough. Carina is left to recount her latest Mr Hyman encounter solo, while I buy a banana Paddle Pop and head to the bins around the side of the kiosk to unwrap it. Slowly.
‘I reckon you identify more with them,’ says Jordan.
‘Really?’ responds Layla, and I can picture her nose scrunching up. She always hated her nose. She called it her ‘fat Lebbo nose’.
‘Yeah, I don’t know why. I mean, I don’t know why I say that, not I don’t know why you do . . .’
‘Maybe it’s my name or the way I look, but yeah, I do kind of feel like I’m more them. Like, I wouldn’t say I feel that all the time. At home I don’t. Sometimes down here I don’t know. Mostly though, it’s like I’ve got one foot in either —’
‘Don’t say “side”!’
‘Camp, happy?’ Nudge. ‘It’s like I’ve got a foot standing in either camp and I could easily step the other foot over into one or the other depending on where I am, who’s around, who I’m talking to, what family event I’m being forced to attend . . . I’m a halfie to them, that’s what they all think.’
They both look out to the river silently for a moment as I battle with melting Paddle Pop travelling down my arm.
‘They really are opposite camps, you know,’ Layla continues. ‘I just don’t know why we always have to be opposed to something, you know?’
‘Keeps life interesting, doesn’t it? Different views and all that.’
‘Not right now, it doesn’t,’ says Layla. ‘There’s one view I wish everyone on this beach shared. I finally have an ally in Imogen, which should feel like an epic win, but everything else is still pretty much in the same place it’s been in for weeks. How are we supposed to move forward?’
I’m holding my breath, I can feel a tickle in my throat . . .
‘You’re going to find a way, mate. Trust me.’
. . . And as much as I’ve tried to repress it, I’m coughing now, hard and loud.
I don’t have to look to know that two heads have turned. I stride off, swiftly, without looking back to check. I don’t need to see their faces anymore. What I got to see instead was far more satisfactory: a tiny glimpse of what real friendship looks like.
Getting away from that beach – and Carina’s incessant chatter about how she hopes she didn’t get Layla into any trouble when she told Mr Hyman whatever it was she told him, not to mention Layla herself and her obvious pondering in my direction – is a solid plan. Packing up and walking (more like running) down the street until I am at the front yard with the campaign sign rammed into it, is the best plan I’ve come up with all day. Unfortunately, it’s the only plan I’ve come up with today, when I really need a far more beneficial one to materialise.
The house is empty when I walk in, quiet apart from the keyboard solo vibrating in Shon’s room. I collapse on the lounge and switch on the air-con. How is Shontel not dying from heat exhaustion in here? I’m dying from being trapped in a vault. A vault full of everyone’s dirty secrets, none of which I asked to be the keeper of. First Daniel’s, then . . . Daniel’s again. Does Maddy have any clue he’s cheating on
her? I wonder as I lie back and welcome the artificial breeze. What would she do if she knew? She’s a fireball, that Madeline. I wouldn’t want to be in the room – or on the beach – when she finds out. If she finds out. From where I’m lying, it would seem Daniel Mason-Johnson is untouchable.
But he can touch others.
A new song is gliding through Shontel’s speakers.
He touched Shon. Not with his hands, but with his reckless decision and actions nonetheless.
I haven’t spoken to my sister since dinner last night, and I need to get up and tell her I’m sorry. It’s Daniel who should really be saying sorry, though. When I reach her room, my knocks don’t penetrate through due to the loud music, so I open the door. But she’s not there. Her room is filled only with an unmade bed and the sounds of Triple J. I suddenly feel like I can’t breathe. She’s nowhere else in the house, I already know that because I can feel it.
I check anyway. I feel like I’m not in my own body as I open each door in the corridor, and skate through the kitchen, and scan the backyard and river in the distance, and weave through boxes of flyers in the garage.
She’s not here.
She’s supposed to be here. She’s supposed to be recovering.
I’m back in her room, tossing away blankets and sheets. Throwing pillows against the wall, at the corner where her backpack should be. At the bedside table where her phone is still in place. I’m not crying. But I’m so angry, because look what he’s made her go and do.
CHAPTER 11
Mum speaks first. ‘Why weren’t you here with her?’ she asks softly, calmly, but somehow aggressively. ‘Why weren’t you here watching . . . checking on her . . . instead of faffing about at that beach?’
Dad doesn’t speak at all. He’s walking in circles, rubbing the greying stubble on his chin over and over again with his hand.
Why would she go? Why would Shontel pack a bag and leave? These are the questions my mother should be asking. I already know the answer.
Mum and Dad have rushed home from work, after my frantic message, to search for an answer that doesn’t make them feel any guilt. They think it’s because of the fight I started at the dinner table last night.
‘She must be upset about how you were speaking to your father,’ Mum says, scrolling through the contact list on her phone. ‘We need to call everyone, her friends, everyone. She’s not well.’
It suddenly pops into my head – the kayak. I make a dash for the glass sliding doors in the back room, across the grass and to the shed at the end of our yard, just before the dirt path that separates us and a leap into the river. She’s definitely gone out in the kayak and into the river somewhere.
The beach.
Without even exhaling, I’ve squeezed down the side of our house and onto the road. Shontel’s the runner in the family – my asthma gets in the way – but I’m giving it my best. Beads of sweat pouring down my forehead and nose, loose strands of hair sticking to my cheeks, I can see the opening. I pause for breath with one hand on the low wooden fence and look out onto the small, insignificant beach. The beach I’m always wasting my time at. Everyone is where they should be, where I left them, but Shontel is not. I search for Jordan – he’s in position. I make another run for it.
‘Geez, slow down, Usain!’ he says when I get to the kiosk, then almost fall through its walls.
He hands over a stack of sausage rolls to a guy at the counter and makes his way through the side entrance.
‘My sister . . . have you seen her . . . in a kayak . . . the one I was in last night?’
‘Uh, no. I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve been behind here for a few hours, but . . .’
He starts towards the boat ramp and I follow. ‘Definitely not here,’ he says, turning back to face me. I finally start crying. ‘Oh, man, is everything alright?’
I shake my head, tears joining the sweat on my face.
‘Can I do anything . . . to help?’
Probably not. I shake my head again and look out to the river. There’s a guy on a jet ski doing happy laps, at a speed I can tell is way beyond the limit out there. His mates are on the edge of the river, cheering him on.
‘Yeah, he’s a bit of a dickhead, that guy,’ says Jordan, noticing where my gaze is fixed.
‘He sure is,’ I agree, watching Daniel Mason-Johnson’s dickhead face as he jolts up and down with the waves.
Maddy stands alongside the boys and doesn’t notice me coming up beside her. She’s too busy watching her boyfriend perform stupid tricks.
‘Oh, God, Imogen, you scared me,’ she says when she does finally sense my presence, with her hand on her chest as though I truly did frighten her. ‘I didn’t see you creeping there. What’s, um, up?’
I’ve forgotten that my face must be a gross mess. I haven’t wiped away any tears, sweat, hair. I also haven’t thought about what I want to say to her, to anyone. Why did I even come down here?
‘You . . . haven’t seen my sister, have you?’ It almost comes out as a whisper, with the revving and zooming of the jet ski in the background overpowering my voice.
‘Like, recently?’
‘Today. Like, this afternoon.’
Maddy curls her bottom lip up over the top one and shakes her head, her focus on the performance in the water. ‘Why would I have seen your sister, Imogen?’
She thinks I’ll walk away now, but I don’t. ‘You know what he’s doing out there is dangerous, right?’ I can hear myself, I know I sound like some kind of goody-two-shoes. Like a mum.
Letting out an exaggerated breath, Maddy swivels her face to mine. ‘Is that what you’re really here for? To find a way to get Daniel in trouble? Because the last time I checked, he’s not hurting anyone.’
Her face flinches when she realises the words she’s just spat, then it swivels back.
‘Not this time, anyway,’ I say.
We’re both facing the river and the antics being staged on it. It’s always been ‘The Daniel Show’. The crowds roll up, pay their money, laugh and clap, and go home satisfied with the good-value entertainment. Maddy’s just another sucker in the crowd.
She doesn’t respond and I don’t say anything else as minutes pass, but I feel frozen in time. Maddy’s no longer cheering or laughing. Her arms are folded across her chest.
Should I tell her what Daniel is up to, what he’s doing to her? Would it save her any crushing-heart feels if it came from someone else? I’m the last person she’d want to find out from, I think, and finally my brain sends a signal to my legs and I’m on my way back across the beach.
No one has seen her, no one has heard from her. It’s like she’s just disappeared into muggy air. Is there someone we haven’t thought of? I wonder as I lie on top of my quilt with my legs up the wall above the bedhead. Carina says it’s a yoga pose that can reverse the effects of gravity on the body’s system. If she paid any attention in science, she’d know that gravity is inescapable. And we’re all victims of it, just like we’re victims of this toxic community. Mum and Dad are out in said community right now, being all #Brave4Shontel and acting like none of this is their fault.
My phone has been buzzing beside me for I don’t know long. I finally look down: Layla Karimi. She chased after me as I was pounding through the sand, away from the one-man show on the river. I heard her calling my name, but I couldn’t stop.
‘Layla.’
‘Hey, oh my gosh, I heard about Shontel . . . is that why you were running off the beach this arvo? I hope she’s okay. Is there anything I can do? Are you okay?’
Layla’s flustered rambling comes from a place of kindness, I’m aware of that, but I want it to go away. Why did I pick up the phone?
‘Your mum must be freaking out . . .’
‘She should be,’ I say, although I hadn’t expected to say anything. ‘I mean, would this be happening if she hadn’t just made herself the judge and jury in all this?’
I don’t get why Layla seems to have this delusion in her he
ad, of my mother being some kind of dream mum. She says nothing as I pause to remind myself of the real reason this is happening. ‘After we’ve found her, Layla, I’m going to the police. I’m going to tell them everything.’
I bring my feet off the wall and curl onto one side on my bed, realising that I only made that massive decision in this very moment, just as the words tumbled out.
‘Okay, well, I’m coming with you,’ Layla says. And now I know we have our better plan.
It feels as though I never even slept, because there are most definitely tiny weights sitting on my eyelids and a wrecking ball crashing into my skull. But I was asleep for some time, and I wake up to find myself in a familiar curled-up position. I reach for my phone that’s snuggled into my side – the clock says it’s early – and also find a screen full of missed calls and voicemails. Layla. Again.
I’m not in the mood. What I am in the mood for, I decide, is a morning run. It felt good – surprisingly good – to run yesterday while I was in such a rage. It felt better than putting my legs up a wall.
I’m dressed and out the door before Mum and Dad wake to my stealth movements in their silent house. It’s warm already, I realise when I jog down the front steps, but I’m committed now. As committed as I’ll ever be.
Pounding the pavement of my street, I imagine what it will be like. I’ve never been inside a police station before. Will they know who I am? Will they even take us seriously? Has Layla thought about what we’ll say? My feet hit the concrete harder and faster, and I hope my lungs can keep up with them. When I pass the beach, I don’t even look; no one will be there yet, anyway. My breathing gets harder and faster, and I hope my dodgy netball knees don’t buckle. I’m turning corners and street names are a blur, but somehow it all still feels familiar. I’ve lived here my whole life, of course it’s all familiar. I learned to ride a bike in these streets, I spent Saturday afternoons at parties in these backyards, I went to a tenth birthday party at this house.
I stop and look up at its windows. I feel like I’m suffocating, and my hands are reaching for my tightening chest. The house hasn’t changed since we were ten years old, except Daniel now has a flashy car parked sideways on the grass. It has a shiny coating, just like his reputation. I’ve stopped and looked for longer than I realise, my breath returning to its own version of steady. My nerves, however, are not steady as a silhouette appears behind one of the windows and the vertical blinds begin to twist open. I don’t see who it is; I don’t want to know who it is. Instead, I urge my feet to lift and lower. They lift and lower back the way they came, down the street and around the same corners. As I chug past the beach for a second time, I notice some fishermen dragging hauls out of their small boats and Jordan releasing the metal roller door of the kiosk window.
Half My Luck Page 9
